Mayfield turns back Lady Cats

RIO RANCHO — Teya Morris hit a 3-pointer on Clovis High’s second trip down the court on Saturday.

It was quite a while before the Lady Wildcats scored again.

Mayfield finished the period on a 13-0 run and went on to a 55-33 win over CHS in Saturday’s fifth-place game of the Mel Otero Invite.

Six-footers Kendra Butler and Jayce Gorzeman combined for 27 points and were a bit too much for the Lady Cats (3-5) to handle around the basket.

“We’ve been getting off to slow starts, and you can’t do that against Mayfield,” CHS coach Jeff Reed said. “We had chances to be right with them, but we put ourselves in a hole.”

The Trojans (4-4), who lost to Clovis 62-48 in the then-Class 5A state championship game in the team’s most recent meeting, opened the second half with a 6-0 run for a 19-point lead. The Lady Cats cut it down a bit with a 6-0 run of their own, but a Mayfield 3-pointer just before the buzzer wiped out any momentum they might have had.

The Lady Cats eventually went to pressure defense, but couldn’t make much happen.

“We had to do that, but for the most part Mayfield wants to play like that,” Reed said. “So we’re kind of playing into their hands.”

Morris finished with 11 points and fellow sophomore Mimi Coleman added nine for CHS, which returns to the Albuquerque area next weekend to face top-ranked Cibola on Friday night and Sandia on Saturday in their next action.